I was unloading the dishes this morning and practicing mindfulness as I did so. One benefit of mindfulness is that it draws your attention to the present moment. So often our thoughts go to the future or the past, and our awareness of the present gets squeezed and constricted between remembering and anticipating. Yet, it is in the present that we find our power. I cannot act in the future or in the past; the former has yet to materialize and exists only in imagination; the latter is over and exists in memory. It’s in the present that I can summon the wholeness of my being into action. Even as basic an action as simply being aware in the moment makes my surroundings and my presence in them come alive, opening possibilities that I might miss otherwise.
So, mindfulness is a powerful practice for marshalling our attentiveness and potentials in the present moment. Its usefulness is shown in how ubiquitous the teaching of mindfulness has become; it can be found in schools, institutions, corporations, even the military. In some ways, it is in danger of becoming a cliché. Being mindful is a powerful, even a life-changing tool; it would be a shame for it to become only a fad.
This morning, though, while unloading the dishes from the dishwasher, I reflected on the primacy that we give to mind, a bias left over from the Age of Reason in Western culture. Why not a practice of “bodyfulness” or “sensory-fullness?” Why not “heartfulness?” The body has its own form of attentiveness, as does the heart.
Actually, we do have such practices. Professional athletes, dancers and martial artists, for instance, all develop a high kinesthetic awareness, a form of “bodyfulness,” which, like mindfulness, draws one’s attention to the present.
I, however, am no athlete (whatever fantasies I may entertain!). If I were to describe my daily spiritual practice, though, it would not be mindfulness as much as “heartfulness.”
For me, mindfulness focuses on myself and my being aware and present in the moment. Heartfulness, though, focuses on the “other” and what I might add to their life or beingness in the moment. This “other” doesn’t need to be a living being. It can be an artifact as well. Incarnational Spirituality has an exercise called the “Touch of Love.” It’s very simple. You focus upon a source of love within you, which many people find located in their heart, and you draw the energy of that love, like drawing water from a well, into your body, down your arms, and into the fingers of your hand. Then, you touch something, visualizing that love flowing out from you as a generative source to bless whatever you are touching.
It’s very much a heartfulness exercise, one that honors the life, the integrity, and the wellbeing of the object you are touching. It forms a connection of love in the moment, and I have found that where such a connection exists, the blessings are reciprocal. Beyond that, it reminds me as I do it that everything is alive at a subtle, energetic level; I am—we all are—a part of a living universe
The wonderful thing is that we can “touch” the world around us in more than just physical ways. The “touch of love” can be through our eyes in the way we see, acknowledge, and appreciate something or someone. It can be through our ears as we appreciate the sounds we hear and the sources from which the sounds come. It can even be through our thoughts and imagination as well, which is where mindfulness and heartfulness can merge and reinforce each other.
Mindfulness makes me aware of the moment. Heartfulness makes me aware that I am part of a living community all around me, one with which I can commune and relate, especially through love. This morning, as I took each dish, each piece of cutlery, each utensil out of the dishwasher, I could let my appreciation and blessing for that object flow through my fingers. After all, whatever it looks like on the surface—whether a plate, a bowl, a fork, a pan—it is always a manifestation of the Sacred, an expression of the One Life that permeates all things. How could I not be heartful with it? We are kin on the long journey of evolution; we are participants in the manifestation of a universe.
So much of what divides us at the moment and generates conflict exists on the level of concepts, ideas, and perceptions. They are conflicts of the mind, of misinformation, of “fake news,” of propaganda and deceit. Perhaps in heartfulness we can find the bridges over the chasms that thoughts are creating.